The divestiture movement at Harvard has matured since its birth in the turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Inherited by Black activists from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1972, and then passed on to a broader-based coalition in the late 1970s, the movement has undergone considerable change in its tactics and goals. The divestiture activists of 1983 who use both moral and financial persuasion bear little resemblance to those that 11 years ago seized University buildings and demanded divestiture by force.

Harvard first came under fire for its holdings in firms doing business in South Africa when the SDS in the late 1960s, charged that the University was involving itself in the seedier side of capitalism. But the SDS argued that the Harvard-South Africa connection was insignificant compared to other links Harvard had to institutionalized racism and oppression, including the U.S. military. After the SDS stormed University Hall in 1969, there was no mention of South Africa or Harvard's investment policies in the list of demands it released to the administration.

Divestiture did not become an issue in its own right until 1972, when 30 Black students, members of the Harvard-based Pan-African Liberation Committee, occupied the administrative offices in Massachusetts Hall in an attempt to force Harvard to sell $21 million worth of stock in the Gulf Oil Company. The students argued that Gulf, which was conducting operations in the then-Portuguese colony of Angola, directly supported the colonization of Africans by paying taxes to the white regime there. The demonstrators vacated the building a week later after the University threatened to file criminal charges. While President Bok refused to bow to the students demands, he did offer them one concession: the creation of the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR), a body composed of students, faculty, and alumni which would give the Corporation non-building recommendations on ethical issues it faces in managing Harvard's endowment.

The next four years saw the issue of divestiture relegated to the back burner of campus activism. For example, 1976 the year in which the United Nations called for complete corporate withdrawal from South Africa came and went with no student protest.

Interest in the Harvard-South Africa relationship picked up a year later, when a small number of seniors asked alumni returning for their class reunions to withhold donations to Harvard, in protest of its investments in companies with links to the apartheid regime.

But it was not until 1978 that a wide-ranging student movement began to promote the cause of divestiture. At the center was the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee (SASC), founded in November of that year SASC managed to organize a tenuous coalition of disparate minority and political groups into the United Front, and led them through a series of mass rallies and demonstrations that culminated just before reading period. SASC called on the ACSR to recommend to the Corporation that it sell stocks in banks making loans to the South African government, support shareholder resolutions calling for complete corporate withdrawal, and issue a clear, public statement on its investment policies.

In March, the ACSR released a report saying that it would only make recommendations to Harvard on a case-by-case basis, although it urged a ban on investments in offending banks. This left students dissatisfied. A month later, the Corporation reacted to the ACSR's report with a report of its own.

In its response, the Corporation agreed to review investments on a case-by-case basis, but refused to accept the ACSR's suggestion that it divest from banks lending money directly to the apartheid regime.

That evening, about 3500 people, over one-half of the undergraduate population, took to the streets in a torch and candle-light procession that wound its way through campus and Harvard Square. A few hundred students spent the night in front of University Hall, and prevented a number of deans from entering the building the next morning. The protesters later dispersed without incident, and the University eventually reversed its bank-ban decision.

The protest quieted down until 1982, when the University attempted to retreat on the 1978 commitment. The University asked the ACSR to approve an end to the ban on investment in banks lending money to South Africa. SASC reactivated itself, and packed on open meeting of the ACSR with 300 students. One after another, students including representatives from the Conservative Club rose to urge the ACSR not to change its stand. The ACSR stuck to its original position, and urged the Corporation to maintain the ban The Corporation did.

Emboldened by their success, student activists asked for another open meeting of the ACSR this spring, at which they asked it to recommend to the Corporation to sell the stock of any companies in its portfolio with ties to South Africa. Their pleas apparently had some impact on the advisory body. For the first time even, the ACSR voted on a resolution recommending complete divestiture, and narrowly defeated it by a vote of 6 to 5, with one abstention. The abstaining member then changed his vote, bringing it to an even 6 to 6 split. The resolution did not pass, though, because it lacked a majority.

On May 7, students--one for every 10 that demonstrated in 1978--rallied in support of those on the committee who had voted in favor of the resolution. To many activists, it seemed that it was only a matter of time before the ACSR passed a divestiture resolution.

So it was not surprising that the divestiture activists of 1983 concentrated their energies on swaying the University itself. But unlike their predecessors, they sought to bring their efforts into the mainstram by enlisting parts of the "establishment in the struggle, and moderating tactics. At the same time, the 1983 divestiture movement found itself led by students and organizations previously uninvolved in the issue.

Without warning, and without informing other groups of their plans, seven students announced on April 18 that they were beginning a water and vitamins only hunger strike to force the University to divest.

President Bok responded immediately by declaring that he made up his mind and student pressure would not hamper there would be no divestiture. Several of the strikers quit while others vowed to hold out.